Recommendations for reducing the costs of certifying smart home appliances

13 September 2016

The smart home market is one of the fastest growing industries right now. “Research and market” estimates, that it will be worth $56 billion in 2020 with CAGR on a level of 17.2% between 2015 and 2020. There is no doubt, that the trend will bring a lot of good to the everyday life of our customers, especially if it comes to energy saving.

Producers of home appliances that are connected to the cloud are challenged more than ever — we need to make sure our devices are not only user-friendly and well designed but also secure and safe. Fridges, ovens, lighting system and many other components of our home environment have never been connected to the web before, never collected data and at last, never used it in order to work in a better, smart and more efficient way.

Certifying process

Certifying our devices is essential. Depending on the product, certified might be single components by components producer, who gains such ability by special permit issued by certification authorities. Then, when we already now that we used certified components, all producers must gain certificates for the end-product. Depending on the country law is different here.

Why do we need certificates?

Certificates are not only an official confirmation, that product is allowed to be sold. It’s also, or even more importantly, a source of information for all of our customers. Certificates say about the safety of our product for both user and environment or it’s quality.

Basing on information provided by certificates users are also able to compare products between each other, even if they are from different producers or with the totally different look.

IoT brings new certificates

Devices that our customers buy in markets have certificates from many different areas. Yet a few years ago, certificates were issued only on hardware, but since home appliances started to become “smart” we also need to test and prove the safety of users information collected by device or user experience of an app, that is installed.

Creating any device both designers and engineers need to remember, that has to be user-friendly and functional, especially in it’s future “natural” environment. Will Wi-Fi be strong enough and will provide a stable connection to the router? What are the possibilities of interference in the place of use? Those are the questions that we should get back to after each step of creation.

How to accelerate certificates issuing?

Almost each step of creation a new product is important. Crucial part about issuing a certificate are components made of high-quality materials, that are also certified. You also need to remember about the proper way of assembly, having always in mind safety of user (electric shock, failure, sharp edges, cover for movable parts are only a few dangers our devices must be free from) .

Then it’s only easier — if you have required documents proving our products quality (such as a declaration of actual efficiency and the classes of energy efficiency) issuing a certificate is only a matter of days.